…Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
– Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

She stands free, on her own, yet never alone, as she
invites visitors, who freely take advantage of her open nature.
Homeric Helen may well have launched a thousand ships,
but this lady has harbored home multitudes more.
Those unlanded seven sea sailors, come from all points,
to view her crowning glory as seeing all “exiles” equal.
Conceived to be found, forever in her finery, she is
an island, perpetual purity, in tides of plastic popularity.
Judgement of Paris; she is the doyenne of French couture,
her timeless style would grace any forum of little Italy.
The ultimate émigrée, she basks Verdigris,
guiding friends from darkness with golden flame.
Forever stepping forward from shackles to freedom,
she shields her liberation from those who would
hem and hector her “huddled masses” with chains.
A beacon in a land sought by so many pilgrims,
she holds her torch to dim tyrants near and far.
The rushed “golden door” she illuminates, remains ajar,
between walls old, new and thus far imagined.
Her ostentatious neighbors build ever higher mirrors
trying to trump one another and catch her “mild eyes.”
Born of revolution, the personification of resolution,
she stands firm, her towering gaze settling on the worthy,
not those who merely grow wealth to measure worth.
Stoically silent, she shamelessly fronts this, her land,
fathered for the free, built on the bare black backs
of those whose liberty, was bought and paid for,
by cottoned on masters who blew such sweet smoke.